


Time Stops in the Library

by Tempest_Wind



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Character Death, Multi, The Library, Vashta Nerada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 07:14:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tempest_Wind/pseuds/Tempest_Wind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Doctor has lost everything, he risks all that's left for a second chance and some much-needed guidance from an old flame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Stops in the Library

Dead. They were all dead.

Why did every last person in the Doctor’s life have to die?

The companions: all of them so beautiful and young and vibrant with life; time flowed through them like wine poured into a chalice. There comes a point when the wine spills over or the chalice has a hole.

This wasn’t what he needed to think about. The Doctor, in his unwieldy female body, stumbled through the ruptured deck of the TARDIS, too grief-stricken to take note of the new form, the new hair, the new face. It was all pain.

The TARDIS stared back at him, her display shifted and changed, her face warped as his while they tumbled through space and time.

He – she – gripped the sparking board, commanding control with only one destination in mind. It was risky, possibly suicidal. Good, the Doctor thought; it deserves to be this way.

She steered the screaming column, pushing towards the far-off planet: the Library.

The TARDIS dug her soles into the crumbling marble. The Doctor threw open the door and stepped into the dimming light. Books, like the walls of a prison, surrounded the Doctor on all sides.

She stomped through the hall, tugging off her bowtie and letting slip her ill-fitted suit jacket. She could still smell them, still sense them.

“You want me?” the Doctor shouted into the void. “Eh? You want a PIECE OF THIS?”

Little specks hung in the light: the Vashta Nerada.

“Want your REVENGE? Come at me! Come on!”

She plodded through halls and halls of towering books. Everything was covered in that thick dust-like substance made of trillions of tiny, carnivorous lives.

There wasn’t a peck on her skin. Not any difficulties breathing. No fear. No repetitive questions. Just silence in the Library.

“What’re you scared of? Come ON?”

She pushed open the last set of doors as sweat built up against the back of her neck. Climbing the stairs, she made her way to the ancient electrical panel. The computer, the memory, the mainframe of this world.

And she stopped running. She stared, instead, at the intricate wires, the circuits.

“The safest place in the world,” the Doctor whispered. It was the home of the little girl who tried so hard to save every life that stepped foot, unwittingly, into this dangerous jungle.

And it was the final resting place he sought for her…

“River.” She pressed her face against the wiring. Trembling: she realized she was shaking and when she looked at her hand, laughter took her. It wasn’t giddiness or joy. She finally knew what she’d been missing, what she needed the most.

“I’m insane.” The Doctor grinned at the control panel. “I’m a madman in a box, out of his box and out of his mind.”

—

It was a quiet day in the park. River watched her beautiful children at play on the grounds.

“They’re perfect,” a new voice spoke over her shoulder.

“They’ll always be perfect,” River said, letting her smile slip into a smirk. She turned and took in the Doctor’s form.

The tweed pants and button blouse were undamaged and fit better in this world.

“New body,” River said.

The Doctor hesitated a moment. “Oh… yes, well, I suppose.”

“Female.”

The Doctor gripped the back of the bench and hesitated as self-consciousness finally wormed its way into her sandpit of emotions.

“Yes, er, apparently,” the Doctor said. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“Not at all. Sit.” River gave that enigma of a smile.

The Doctor followed orders and went to adjust her bowtie. It wasn’t there. Her subconscious mind remembered that she’d left it in the Library.

“It’s been a while.”

“Has it?” the Doctor’s voice cracked as she tried to speak in deeper tones.

“You must’ve been desperate to come all the way out here.”

“I…” The pain, the horrors, the guilt, it all seemed distant in this place. “I’m horrible,” she said as if reminding herself.

“You’re the greatest man I know.”

“No, I-“ She was aware of her convictions and the feelings associated with them. The horror sat bubbling beneath the surface. “I killed people.”

“You save people.”

“I killed them. So many. Always, when they travel with me they die. Everyone dies so young.”

“Everything dies, my love.”

The Doctor gripped her hair. Longer. She had long hair, she noted. Not Amy-long, but it wasn’t as short as Martha’s. Poor, dear Martha, so brave until the very end.

“They die because of me.” The Doctor was sick in the pit of her stomach.

“They die because they are meant to die.” River took her hand and pulled it away from her hair. “All things are meant to die, many in obscurity. They knew a better life with you.”

“Pain. Misery. They knew nothing but fear and death and that’s all I gave them in the end.”

“You gave them hope,” River said, gentle with her words. “That’s why they were willing to risk their lives.”

The Doctor opened her mouth to argue, but all the pain and fear and sadness she’d held inside, all during the battle and the casualties, the wound and the regeneration, rattled its way out of her.

Sobs echoed through her body. And as if the ache were her own, River took The Doctor into her arms and held her.

“My dear beloved, you must not blame yourself,” she whispered. “You are loved by everyone important to you.”

“Why do they leave me?” the Doctor rasped.

“All good things must come to an end.”

The Doctor gripped her sleeve. “Not here…” She met River’s gaze. “It’s…. here it’s perfect. There’s no… no pain, no fear. It’s the idyllic life. I can be with you. Here, with you.”

“You’ve the spark of madness in your eyes.”

“A madman in a box without his box. Then I’m just a madman. I couldn’t hurt anyone. I can be in here forever.”

The fine lines on River’s face seemed to deepen. She offered a kind smile built with sympathy and sadness.

“Don’t pity me,” the Doctor hissed. “This is what I need. This is what I deserve. I’m too dangerous out there.”

She cupped the Doctor’s cheek and kissed her on the bridge of her nose. “No, sweetie,” she whispered.

The Doctor trembled under her fingertips. “What do I do?” her voice was tiny and broken.

“You have to save the universe.”

“I’m so tired. River, I don’t know what I’m doing and I never have.”

“You’ll think of something.” She smirked and squeezed her shoulder.

The Doctor looked past the playground, back towards that idyllic sky.

“It’s so lonely out there,” she said.

“You’ll go because you have to. You’re the Doctor.”

The Doctor stared down at her hands. They weren’t bloodied or scarred. They were perfectly regenerated hands. Girl hands. Gentle hands.

She patted herself on the cheeks just to feel her blood flow. Soft cheeks. Soft lips. Small nose. Still a quite big chin, though.

Reaching over, she took River by the cheeks, giving them a squeeze. She pressed a kiss to River’s lips and rose to her feet.

“That’s right, I’m the Doctor,” she announced to the playground. “It’s a new me, but I’ll still be saving the day.”

The boy at the top of the jungle gym looked down at her. “The Doctor? The hero mum’s always going on about?”

“Yes, and don’t you forget it!” She turned to dash off, back towards the false horizon, but stopped short.

River was on her feet, her gaze lovingly set on the Doctor.

The Doctor returned to her side, balling her hands into uncomfortable fists. “Your, um, husband – the new one—he’s… a lucky man.”

“I know,” River said, smirking. “He tells me all the time.”

“Well, he’s right. And… yes, well, that was all.”

“Looks just like you,” River added before the Doctor could rush off. “Well, the you I spent the most time with.”

The Doctor hesitated. “Really now?”

“CAL wanted to make me the perfect man. It was you.”

The Doctor lingered a moment, feeling terribly pleased for herself.

“Go on,” River said.

“I’ll see you,” the Doctor said.

“You won’t need to. Go.”

“But I’ll want to.”

River chuckled. “Just go.”

The Doctor ran back into the false horizon. She opened the invisible door and dashed through the electric wiring. She tunneled her way back into her body and gave an enormous gasp.

One heart beating. Two hearts beating. She patted herself on the chest for good measure, and felt a tad uncomfortable at the padding that was in the way.

“Better not do that again,” she chided herself and flew to her feet. She ran back through the labyrinth of the Library, around book cases and through the numerous specks that hung in the light.

“All right, Vashta Nerada. You can stay where you are. I…. have a universe to save.”

She made her way through the double-doors into the grand hallway. Light streamed in from the hole she’d made in the ceiling of the hall. The TARDIS sagged toward the floor, her bottom digging into the ancient marble.

The Doctor approached her only constant companion and pressed her hands to the ancient wood-like structure. She pressed a kiss to the outer hull.

She climbed her way inside and stared at the glimmering new console.

“We have more adventures to see,” she toyed with some switches. “Places to go. I know I push you, old girl, but I think you still like it. You sexy thing.”

She pressed a series of buttons and felt a jolt beneath her as the TARDIS rose to the sky and beyond.


End file.
